


if you give it a name (then it's already won)

by formerlydf



Series: but my martini is still dry [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/pseuds/formerlydf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam comes home. Zayn can disable a bomb in six seconds using a kitchen knife and some chewing gum, but he's not sure what to do when his best friend won't even tell him what's wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you give it a name (then it's already won)

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy. So, almost a year ago, I wrote [but my martini is still dry (these things never last)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621986), at which point I realised that instead of the long-but-tidily-self-contained one-shot I had been envisioning, it was instead going to have to become two fics: the prologue, and then the bits I had been planning on writing before the prologue magically became 10k. And then, because I made awful choices, I decided that I needed to write a short piece from Zayn's pov, which subsequently took a year to write and ended up at 15k. Such is my life, apparently. So there is going to be one more fic after this! Hopefully I will manage to finish it before January 2015. Fingers crossed.
> 
> So many thanks to [harriet_vane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/harriet_vane/pseuds/harriet_vane) and [HeyGeek](http://heygeek.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing (and, in Rachel's case, for telling me to rewrite the second half for Reasons); to [croissantkatie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/croissantkatie/pseuds/croissantkatie) for Britpicking; and to everyone on Twitter who cheered me on in my efforts to make Liam even sadder, because we are all terrible people. Title is from The Silence, by Bastille.

Liam gets off the plane from Denmark and walks into Simon’s office with his chin tucked and his shoulders tense. Logically, Zayn knows that’s a small thing. Teasdale already mentioned that something went wrong on Liam’s mission; this could just be the end result of that, Liam steeling himself to go over the places where he thinks he fucked up. Liam’s always like that, taking too much on himself, even the things he can’t help.

Liam’s shame works its way out through the curve of his spine, though, not the set of his head; he hunches his shoulders in, he doesn’t force them down and back. Zayn _knows_. He’s seen Liam after almost all his missions, whether they were working together or not. Liam holds his eyes steady when he’s determined to do better, and his frustration at circumstances beyond his control is all in the way he clenches his fists and bites his lower lip.

This isn’t any of those. Zayn hasn’t seen this before, and that, in and of itself, makes Liam’s body language seem less like post-mission stress and more like a giant flashing sign that something is wrong.

Zayn hates having Liam out in the field, without him.

-

 _he’s back_ , Zayn sends to Niall while he’s waiting for Simon’s office door to open again. He and Niall usually keep a bit of a chat going over the secure lines; working at the home office keeps them busy and everything, but Niall’s good at multitasking and Zayn gets bored easily.

 _yeah!!! pints tonight??_ Niall responds within seconds. Zayn can’t help smiling a little. Niall’s swamped over in Q branch; they’re probably the busiest section of MI6, even counting the active field agents. Field agents at least get downtime. Niall never lets more than half an hour go by between notes, though.

_I’ll ask. You know what happened?_

It wouldn’t be impossible, for Niall to know. Zayn’s got a pretty high clearance level, but Niall’s tapped into almost everything. Zayn thinks half the reason they gave Niall such high clearance is to save face, because they wouldn’t be able to keep him out if he went digging.

Seven minutes, and Niall sends, _nah. livetesting today, no time. ask Liam?_

Niall makes it sound simple. Maybe it is that simple; maybe Zayn’s just worked up over nothing, because Liam shifted in a different way than usual. There’s no point in fretting until Liam gets out of Simon’s office, anyway.

 _Thanks_ , he sends.

_what for??_

Zayn’s not entirely sure how to answer that. Sometimes he think he’d like to thank Niall just for existing.

 _I’ll try to drag him out tonight. Somewhere quiet?_ A night at the pub can’t hurt. Zayn’s seen how it relaxes Liam, sitting in the middle of all the perfectly oblivious and obliviously safe people. Zayn thinks it helps remind Liam of the reasons he runs around the world throwing himself in the line of fire like the stupidly brave idiot he is.

 _of course mate send you the address._ Then, a second later, Zayn’s inbox pings with: _Whoops smthns exploding give me few mins! xx_

Zayn can’t help smiling. He’d be walking on eggshells all the time if he worked in Q branch, with all the poisonous chemicals and laser bolts flying around, but Niall just strolls through it like he’s having the time of his life. He once got his eyebrows singed when a jet-powered backpack took off, and the only thing he said was that his day had been more fun than usual.

 _Try not to blow yourself up, I’d miss you,_ he writes, and after a few seconds of deliberation adds his own _xx_.

Twelve minutes later, Niall says, _course not! love you!_ Zayn spends the next seventy-three minutes smiling into his excruciatingly boring filing, right up until the moment that Simon’s door opens and Liam steps out.

-

Liam doesn’t want to go to the pub. It’s obvious that he doesn’t, even if he insists that he does; he’s doing that thing with the smile and the eyebrows, and when Zayn says that they don’t have to go if he doesn’t want to, he shakes his head before Zayn’s even finished speaking. Zayn doesn’t know why Liam’s trying to lie. He’s not very good at it.

And it’s baffling, too, because Liam could’ve just said no. They all know that sometimes he just doesn’t want to go out, and neither Niall nor Zayn have ever had a problem with it before.

Liam keeps saying that he wants to, though, so they go. What’s Zayn going to do, force him to stay in his flat? Liam’s been away for two weeks; his flat is going to be empty and musty and the only edible food will be the tinned vegetables Liam keeps in his cupboards. Which would be fine, if not for the fact that Zayn knows how much Liam hates tinned vegetables. He eats them, he just hates them.

“We could get takeout instead,” he offers as they walk into the pub. Liam ignores him, and Zayn lets it drop.

They settle down at a table, comfortably surrounded by the chatter of the people around them. It’s exactly what Zayn was hoping for: loud enough that Liam won’t be self-conscious, but quiet enough that they won’t have to yell to hear each other. Zayn rubs his hand lightly over Niall’s shoulder, in thanks.

Niall shoots him a quick smile and asks, “Drinks?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, though, just pushes back from the table and heads for the bar. Zayn watches him nudge his way through the crowd, like the sun winding its way between shadows. He’s got a hole by the hem of his top, maybe from testing today or maybe just from the fact that Niall wears his clothes to breaking point, until they’re more useful for cleaning up grease spills than as actual clothing.

In his peripheral vision, he can see Liam watching him watch Niall. He looks down when Zayn turns back around, but he’s still got the hint of puppy-dog misery around the tiny wrinkles in his forehead and the way his eyes are wider than usual. Zayn’s not sure why. It’s only Niall, that’s all.

“Want to tell me what happened?” he asks mildly, and now it’s Liam’s turn to glance at the crowd, even if he doesn’t seem to be tracking anything. Zayn considers waving a hand in front of his face, but it would probably just make him self-conscious.

Liam inhales, exhales. Inhales again. Zayn waits.

Eventually Liam says, “Saved Sweden from Danish extremists,” which is a start.

“Oh yeah? Good on you.”

“Yeah.” Liam’s hands are on the table, and he’s rubbing circles in the palm of his left hand. Zayn inches his own hand a little closer, just in case Liam wants to grab it.

“You do the thing?” Zayn asks.

Liam’s eyes flicker back to the crowd again. Zayn twists just enough to see that Niall’s gotten tied up chatting to someone, unsurprisingly. Of all the people Zayn knows, including quite a few who are paid to be good with people, Niall is the absolute best at making friends.

“I don’t have a thing,” Liam says belatedly, an old argument.

“The thing where you talk to bad guys and convince them that what they really want to do is give you their launch codes, turn themselves in, and play with puppies for the rest of their lives.”

This is Liam’s cue to flush and start protesting that he _doesn’t_ , really, it’s just that it makes more sense to at least try to solve things peacefully at first, and it doesn’t work half the time, and anyway they can’t play with puppies because they’ll be in jail for the rest of their lives — which is all very nice, except for how Liam constantly seems to forget that Zayn used to work with him and as such got a first-hand view of how Liam’s earnesty can pause even the most hardened villains at least long enough for Liam to knock them out and cuff them.

“I —“ Liam shrugs awkwardly. “Guess so. He’s in custody, anyway.”

“That’s good, then,” Zayn says, trying to bluster past his surprise at the sudden turn off-script. What the fuck else went wrong, then, if Liam saved Sweden and isn’t injured and didn’t have to kill the ringleader? That sounds pretty decent, by Liam’s standards. “No trouble?”

An explosion, maybe? Liam worries about property damage. Or he had to lie to someone he liked. Or a civilian might have got in the line of fire — oh crap, crap, Zayn hopes it wasn’t a kid. But if it were a kid, Liam’d be even more fucked up now, wouldn’t he?

Liam’s paused for too long. Zayn tilts his head and Liam drops his gaze, staring at his hands as if he doesn’t know what they’re doing. “My partner — my contact went rogue.”

Zayn sits back in his chair. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Liam turns his hands, rests his palms flat down on the table. He’s trying too hard to be casual when he says, “It was Louis, actually. Lane, I mean. Remember? Who knew my name? So I guess both of us were right.”

Zayn must pause too long, because Liam adds, unnecessarily and too lightly, “Because you thought he was suspicious and I thought he might work for Agency, and —”

Zayn shakes his head. “I remember.”

 _How could I forget, I’ve only spent the past two weeks worrying about it_ for _you_ , he wants to say, and _I don’t care which of us was right, I care that you’ve barely even smiled today_ , or maybe _At least it wasn’t a kid, I guess_.

“Sorry,” he says after another moment. “He get away?”

“Yeah.” Liam pauses, exhales, taps his fingers on the table, pulls back and puts his hands in his lap. His jaw is set, his shoulders curled in. It’s too much, Liam’s familiar tells all contradicting each other. “He got away.”

“But you’re alright.” Zayn honestly doesn’t give a shit about whether Lane, or whoever he is, is running around scott-free as long as he doesn’t give Liam any more trouble.

Liam looks at Zayn and finally manages a smile. “All in one piece,” he says, gesturing at himself, and his smile’s more on the surface than anything else, but it’s better than the half-grimaces he was throwing around earlier. “Niall’s been gone a while, hasn’t he? Think we can get him back? I’m getting thirsty.”

“He’s making friends, I think,” Zayn says as Liam waves Niall over, although he suspects that Niall was really just giving them time to chat. No matter now, though; Liam doesn’t look like he’s going to be spilling much for the moment. It’s probably best for Niall to come along and work his magic.

“Would you tell him?” Liam asks abruptly, watching Niall beg off his conversation and start heading in their direction. “It’s just — I’ve gone over it maybe a million times today, with Simon and Management and everyone, and I can’t do it again.”

He sounds exhausted. “Of course,” Zayn says. “Even if he’s probably read Teasdale’s report already. I swear he gets those things before Simon does.”

Liam doesn’t say anything, but his smile is a little deeper this time. It’s all Zayn wanted.

“Sorry, ran into a friend,” he hears before he notices the distinctive head of blond hair. Niall sets their drinks down on the table and squeezes in next to Liam. “Miss me?”

“Missed the drinks,” Zayn says, and smiles. Niall grins back and slides Zayn’s glass across the table.

“So how was the helicopter?” Niall demands. “Great, right? Well, mostly great, the suspension’s shit but that was all Martin. I’ll fix it for next time. How many explosions were there?”

Anyone else and Zayn thinks Liam would have tensed up all the way out the door, but Niall’s got a knack for distracting people. It’s not like he ignores when something’s wrong; he just sort of knows the best way to get people to concentrate on something else when they don’t feel like talking and want to pretend things are normal. He’s brilliant that way.

“Only one, and it wasn’t my fault,” Liam insists, falling back into their usual post-mission banter. Zayn knocks his foot against Niall’s and pretends that the shadows under Liam’s eyes have gotten a little lighter.

-

Zayn wonders if it’s a good sign when Liam leaves early, that he’s not forcing himself to stay for the sake of looking normal. Or maybe he just feels that he’s done his duty in dragging himself out and now he can go home, but Zayn’s not really bothered by which. Either way, it means Liam will be packing it in and going to sleep, which is likely for the best. Lots of things seem better after a good sleep. Maybe Liam will wake up feeling a bit more settled.

Zayn’s tempted to walk Liam home, for a second, make sure he gets some proper food and goes to bed and doesn’t stay up half the night needlessly cleaning his flat or vacuuming his shoes or something, but he looks at the set of Liam’s eyebrows and thinks he probably shouldn’t act like Liam is made of glass right now. Liam can tuck himself in, if he needs. Zayn is happy to stay at the pub with Niall.

Liam leaves about a third of his pint, when he goes. Niall will probably finish it, because Niall hates seeing good alcohol go to waste. Zayn couldn’t manage it. He’s only just going to be able to finish his own, probably; it’s starting to rock around a bit in his stomach, heavy and uncertain.

He’s on the verge of suggesting that they go eat something other than pub food, or maybe just head back to Niall’s flat, when suddenly Niall is tackled by a curly-haired stick insect.

“Hazza!” Niall shouts, sounding pleased. He probably knows the stick insect, then. Zayn stops reaching for the knife he keeps in his inseam.

“Didn’t expect to see you,” Hazza says, backing off long enough for Zayn to see that he’s actually boy-shaped and pretty, with dimples.

Niall snorts. “Didn’t expect you to be in the country. You and Taylor taking a break?”

Hazza’s got the kind of smile that could be devastating, if he were trying. Happily, he doesn’t seem to be; Zayn doesn’t really want to work up the energy to be jealous tonight. “Michael had a thing.”

“Course he did.” Niall shakes his head, his mouth twitching upwards at the corners. “Zayn, this is —”

“Hazza,” the boy in question interrupts. “Haz, if you want.”

Niall wrinkles his nose for a split second before shrugging the interruption off. “Haz, this is Zayn.”

Zayn nods, taking a sip of his beer. “Cheers.”

“Cheers, yeah,” Haz agrees. “Mind if I crash your table until my mate gets here? I haven’t seen Niall in ages.”

Niall looks at Zayn, who shrugs and says, “Alright.” He’s sort of curious about how they met, since knowing Niall they could’ve been friends since birth or met on an airplane six months ago, but he doesn’t ask. He’s never really been chatty around strangers. If he really wants to know he can just get it out of Niall later.

Hazza pulls out Liam’s chair and then stops, looking at the half-empty glass. “Do I need to grab another chair?”

“What?” Niall asks. “Oh, nah, he left early. Go for it.”

“What, already?” Hazza asks, laughing but with a bit of a frown, like he’s perplexed that anyone would leave pub at a quarter past seven. He takes the chair. “He alright?”

“He was feeling poorly,” Niall shrugs off. “Think he had a long day at work.”

Zayn wishes he’d said that Liam had a meeting, or a date, or was off to catch a movie instead. It’s stupid, since it’s not exactly like Niall’s revealing any sort of secret — anyone at the bar probably could’ve looked over and noticed that Liam was a bit down — but it still feels too personal. Something’s rubbing Liam raw, and Zayn doesn’t want some charming, dimpled, random friend of Niall’s judging Liam from afar. It’s not his business.

Hazza glances sideways at Zayn and reaches for his own glass. “Hope it’s better tomorrow,” he says, and turns the conversation to some person he knows whose name Zayn might’ve read in a gossip column somewhere.

-

“He’s nice,” Zayn admits on the way back to Niall’s. Hazza knows how to wage an all-out charm offensive, apparently. Most people aren’t that aggressively friendly to Zayn unless they’re trying to sleep with him. “Sorry I wasn’t, you know.”

Warmer. Paying more attention. Interested in staying longer. All of the above.

Niall knocks a companionable shoulder against Zayn’s arm. “Nah, you’re all right. It was just Haz, anyway, not like he was offended or anything.”

“Well, that’s — good.” Zayn’s not sure whether he would’ve cared even if he _had_ offended Haz. Maybe, for Niall’s sake. Niall’s pretty laid back most of the time but he’s not exactly happy when people are shit to his friends, and Zayn hates it when Niall’s not happy. Niall should never not be happy. “You known him long?”

“A while, yeah. We did a summer thing together in uni. He dated my ex-girlfriend.” Niall frowns. “Or maybe I went out with his ex-girlfriend, I can’t remember.”

“But you never...” 

Niall laughs, shoving one hand in his back pocket. “Once, I think, but we were dead pissed. Think I fell asleep on him halfway through.” 

“Yeah?” Zayn asks, with a quarter of a smile. He wonders what Niall would say if Haz were asking the same thing about Zayn. _We snogged once, but then he ran away._

No; even in the unhappiest confines of his head Zayn knows that Niall wouldn’t say something like that. Zayn is just so frustrated at himself that sometimes it feels like everyone else is, too. And it’s stupid — even more stupid than feeling possessive of someone he’s not even dating — because it’s not like Niall had even seemed particularly bothered. Just surprised, and then interested, and then confused, and then reassuring. 

Zayn has worried a few times, in the past week, if he hurt Niall more than Niall’s letting on. He can’t decide if that’s more or less scary than the idea that Niall wasn’t hurt because Niall doesn’t care.

But it’s not as if Niall had just blown it off, he reminds himself. Zayn had been the one who backed away, who leaned in and then pulled back and then fallen over himself trying to explain everything without saying much of anything. Niall had mostly kissed back and then tried to get a word in edgewise.

“Yeah. He’s good, you know?” Niall asks, looking thoughtful. “He’s a good mate. Always running off somewhere making new friends.”

Zayn smiles despite himself. “Sounds familiar.”

It was the first thing he and Liam had loved about Niall, when he came to MI6. (“Forcibly recruited,” Niall had put it once, when he was far drunker than any of them had anticipated. They still don’t talk about that night much, even if it still lingers in the quiet moments.) They’d not made many friends, in training; the fact that they found each other was a miracle. It felt like a miracle, to not feel so lonely and out of his depth. It just hadn’t been miracle enough to actually make them relax around anyone besides each other.

They’d needed Niall for that, Niall and his easy smile and his cheerful belief that everyone he met was worth talking to. Niall reminded them that sometimes they needed to talk out loud and sometimes they needed to go out. Niall filled up movie nights with cheerful noise Zayn hadn’t realised he was missing. It wasn’t that he and Liam were gloomy, but the field missions had lingered — had weighed — more, before. It was nice, with Niall. He gave life a better sort of balance.

And maybe Zayn still withdraws around strangers and every so often Liam still acts like everything outside the three of them is an exam he’s failing, but Zayn doesn’t really care as much anymore.

“Well, me, I stay in one place,” Niall says.

Zayn is glad of it, so fiercely that he knows he’s never going to be able to explain it without sounding needy or possibly insane. It’s not that he doesn’t like traveling; it’s just that he’s come to appreciate stability more than he ever thought he would, when he let himself get promoted out of field work. With the insanity of their jobs, it’s nice knowing when he wakes up that he can call the same people he called the day before.

“Good,” Zayn says. “Let’s get Liam to do that next.”

Because it’s wrong when Liam’s gone. It was wrong when he and Liam were in the field without Niall, too, and it’s the worst when any of them are alone, but Liam is the one who’s gone the most now, cut off from them except in the most peripheral way. 

Zayn had been at Niall’s and had leaned over and kissed him, and then he’d pulled away because it felt too weird to actually act on any of his feelings when he couldn’t call Liam up and tell him about it. Who was going to listen encouragingly when Zayn talked about how it feels like his day gets better every time he sees Niall? Who’d know exactly the right way to respond to the fact that Niall tasted like popcorn? And was it fair, really, to be kissing Niall when half of his brain was worried about whether or not Liam was getting shot at that very second?

Zayn had been an elite government operative since the time when the rest of his school friends were skipping lectures and getting pissed every weekend. He could dismantle a gun in seven seconds and castrate a man with a paperclip. In the event of a massive poison gas explosion, the only thing he would do is roll his eyes, reach for a gasmask, and shoo everyone outdoors, and he knows this because he’s _been_ in a massive poison gas explosion. Millions of pounds have been spent on training him to be excellent under pressure. Millions of pounds have been spent on training him to be excellent _with people_ under pressure, because when you’ve got a face like Zayn’s and you’re in the field you don’t spend a lot of time crawling around in vents.

So of course, he panicked. _Not now_ , he thinks he’d said somewhere in the hasty flood of words, and when he’d run out of breath Niall had kissed him on the cheek and said, _Just let me know when, then._

And now Liam’s come back, and Zayn’s always going to worry about him but at least he’s not being shot at, and Niall —

“We should go to the shops tomorrow,” Niall says. “Get him some food. He’s probably not got anything but tins and pasta.”

Zayn stops in the middle of the sidewalk and kisses him. Niall, after half a startled second, kisses back.

“When,” Zayn says, both his hands cupping Niall’s face. Someone nearby catcalls, and Zayn doesn’t even think about all the ways he could crash their car from where he’s stood. “This is when. If that’s alright.”

“Oh good,” Niall says, “I was hoping you would say that,” and kisses him again.

-

Later, when they’re in an actual bed and stuck together in a way that ought to be more uncomfortable than it is, Zayn wraps an arm around Niall’s waist and murmurs, “Thank you,” into the warm curve of his shoulder.

“I worry about him too,” Niall says. He has a way of distilling things to their most basic facts. It’s what makes him such a good engineer, probably. 

-

“Liam’s partner flipped on him,” Zayn says the next morning, on the way to the supermarket. They’re stuck in traffic. Sometimes Zayn gets so sick of London. “That’s why he’s upset, he said.”

“What?” Niall asks, which means he didn’t read the report after all. Zayn hadn’t really thought he had; he’d only said it to Liam to make him smile. Niall was busy with testing all day, and anyway, if he’d read something that important about Liam he’d have fucked protocol and told Zayn straight off.

“Yeah, I guess they’d been working together for a while.” Zayn thinks of the way Liam had tried, so hard, to hide the tension in his shoulders. “‘s no wonder he’s so twitchy.”

Niall frowns. “But Liam didn’t have a partner.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was a solo mission,” Niall says. The downward angle of his eyebrows is so odd, on his face. Even when one of his projects is giving him trouble he usually looks more amused than anything else. “It was recon, he didn’t need backup. I mean, it ended up not being recon, but we didn’t know that until the end. He was only supposed to make contact with another agent in Lisbon, that’s all.”

It feels like the bottom of Zayn’s stomach is icing over. “Do you think Lane is targeting him? That party in Toronto, and now he gets himself on Liam’s mission —”

Niall spins towards him, his eyes wide and disbelieving. “ _What_?” Some deep, ingrained part of Zayn’s mind starts to set off alarm bells. Another part is distantly relieved that he refused to let Niall drive this morning.

“But what would be the point?” Zayn asks, thoughtful, because there’s the rub, isn’t it? Management hardly cares about Liam. Simon’s always found him amusing, but everyone knows that he’s a very good rescuer and not a very good spy. He’s never under suspicion, because he wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s not ambitious, which is good because he’s got no chance at promotion. 

Liam is a loving brother and a devoted son and the best friend Zayn’s ever had, but there are only two people at the Agency who think he’s important and they’re both in this car.

“Could he be targeting you?” Zayn starts to ask, because any covert organization would die to have Niall, but he never gets past the _could_ because Niall is having his own one-sided conversation over on the passenger’s seat.

“Oh, fuck,” Niall is whispering. “Oh, fuck, I’m going to kill him.”

“Not Liam,” Zayn says. It’s a statement, not a threat or a quest for reassurance. Niall would never hurt Liam, even if there were anything to hurt Liam _for_. But if Niall’s not talking about Liam, then — “You know Lane?”

Niall chokes. It takes Zayn a moment to realise that he’s laughing. “I’m going to _kill him_ ,” Niall says again, sounding almost hysterical. “I didn’t even know he was in Europe until that fucking text came in! Half the people at the agency thought he was dead!”

“Niall.” Zayn keeps his voice quiet and slow. “You’re starting to scare me a little.”

Niall shakes his head, leaning against the window and closing his eyes. He breathes, until the rhythm of inhale and exhale evens out. Zayn pulls into the Tesco lot, parks, and doesn’t get out of the car.

“He’s an asterisked agent,” Niall says finally. “He’s the best. The only reason they took him off double-oh-duty is because it was too high-profile.”

Someone honks nearby. A shopping trolley rattles behind them.

“He disappeared.” Niall sighs. His eyes are still closed. “Right after Liam saw him last time. He went on mission in Bratsk and it got compromised. He never came back. There was a bet on that he was dead.”

Zayn stays calm. Niall doesn’t seem like he can take anything other than calmness at this point. “So what was he doing with Liam?” 

“I don’t know,” Niall says, resigned and unhappy. Zayn still feels cold. “I didn’t know last time. He’s so classified I couldn’t even say anything.” He opens his eyes, looking over at Zayn. “I don’t think he’d mean to hurt Liam. Lou’s not — he doesn’t believe in collateral damage.”

Zayn tips his head back against the headrest. “I wish Liam had shot him.”

Niall looks pained. Zayn wishes Lane — Lou, Louis, whoever — had never crossed their paths, had never entered the Agency only to leave it and screw up his best friends. “He’s not bad,” Niall insists. “He’s got to have a reason, I know he has.”

“You didn’t see the look on Liam’s face,” Zayn says, but he reaches across the space between them to grab Niall’s hand.

-

Zayn doesn’t fuss over Liam when he opens the door. There’s no point, not when Liam is pretending this thoroughly that everything’s okay and all he needed was a full night of sleep in his own bed. Zayn helpfully doesn’t point out that the dark smudges under Liam’s eyes don’t look any better than they did the day before. There’s no use in saying that Liam looks even worse than he did yesterday, when his shirtsleeves covered the abrasions on his upper arm and he’d been a bit more subtle about favoring his right side.

But Zayn might have been more obvious about all the fussing he wants to do if not for Niall, who shepherds their bags full of provisions into the kitchen and immediately sets about making a fry-up — Liam complains half-heartedly about the grease and his workout regimen, but not like he really means it. Zayn cuffs him upside the head and shoves him into a kitchen chair and then starts putting away all the frozen burritos before they defrost.

There’s a dish of plain pasta in the fridge, like Liam made it last night and couldn’t get through all of it. There’s also ketchup, a few packets of salad dressing that come with restaurant takeaway and last for years, and three bottles of Gatorade. There’s nothing else.

Zayn shoves in the bread, milk, cheese, eggs, bacon, and sausages that they bought, and at least the shelves look a little more alive.

Liam sits dutifully at the counter while Niall scrambles eggs and catches him up on who won what football match. By the time the bacon’s done, he’s moved on to the recent developments on Hollyoaks, of which he somehow has an encyclopaedic knowledge despite the fact that he’s never actually watched it. It’s got Liam smiling, though. This is Niall’s real superpower: the ability to put everyone at ease, no matter what’s wrong. It’s both the reason why Niall would be an asset in the field and why Zayn wants him nowhere near it.

They eat in the kitchen with their elbows on the counter, and when Niall tells them about how Jeff in Q branch accidentally turned his whole foot invisible while trying to make a better invisible ink, Liam actually sincerely laughs.

And it’s all right, then, for a bit. Zayn does the washing up and doesn’t talk much except to offer his own innocuous stories — 048’s constant attempts to sneak whiskey past the doctors into Medical; the most recent attack of the vending machine everyone on Floor Four swears is haunted — and Liam unwinds over the course of breakfast and the cartoons Niall turns on after.

They only get about two hours before Niall’s phone beeps, though. Zayn knew it would come eventually; all field agents get time off after missions, and Zayn took a personal day as soon as he knew when Liam was arriving, but Q branch is still livetesting and Niall had to be on call. Zayn suspects they only got to keep him for so long today because most of Q branch doesn’t even wake up until noon.

“You’re just popular,” he teases, but he can’t exactly fault Q branch for not being able to live without Niall.

“Probably the Astons,” Niall says, wrinkling his nose. “Every time we try to fly them the invisibility calibrator catches fire. Something about the power coupling, I think. The accounting department keeps yelling at us.”

Liam raises his eyebrows. “Have you ever tried using, you know, something less expensive than an Aston Martin?”

Niall grins. “Well, sure, but where’s the fun in that?” Liam shakes his head, but he’s smiling a bit, in the way he does when he doesn’t want to admit how amused he is. Niall adds, “Besides, the double-ohs whinge whenever they have to drive anything cheaper than a Porsche. And then they just bloody go and break the cars anyway! If accounting wants us to stop spending so much money maybe they should institute an actual system, like, unless you can return your car in one piece you can bloody well take the train —”

It’s only a tiny flinch. 

It’s tiny, but it stops Zayn and Niall in their tracks, because Niall’s gone on this exact rant for years and Liam’s never done anything other than laugh. And he does, belatedly, but it’s not — there’s something far away behind his eyes.

“But can you imagine them trying to fit their fancy suits into the luggage compartments?” Liam asks belatedly, and Niall huffs out a bit of a laugh and then hugs him tightly.

“I’m sorry,” Zayn hears him murmur against Liam’s hair. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known.”

Liam’s shoulders tense, but Niall keeps hanging on until Liam forces them back down again. “How could you have known?” Liam asks, and Zayn can practically hear his voice trying to go from strained to comforting. Liam’s favorite distraction is helping other people; he’s always at his best when someone else needs him. “It’s fine. I’m fine. We’ll see you tonight.”

Niall clutches him even harder for a moment and then lets go. “Don’t drink all the beer we brought, most of that’s for me.”

“Of course it is,” Liam says. “Don’t set yourself on fire again, alright?”

“That was one time!” Niall protests, but he’s smiling. Then again, smiling is generally Niall’s default state of being.

“That was three times,” Zayn reminds him dryly. “Come on, I’ve got your keys.”

He walks Niall to the lift, mostly so he can cup Niall’s face and kiss him slowly, the way he gets to do now. “I love you,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Your toaster wouldn’t work half so well, for one,” Niall says, and presses another kiss against the corner of Zayn’s mouth. 

Zayn snorts. “Well, then, thank god for that.” He lets his hand drift from Niall’s shoulder, skimming over all the skin bared by Niall’s penchant for tanks, until he can tangle their fingers together. Niall’s phone beeps again, and Zayn sighs. “Pity you’re so indispensable to everyone, yeah?”

“I could try to be less useful, but then we might all blow up.” Niall squeezes Zayn’s hand, just once, and doesn’t extricate his hand.

“Guess we’ve no choice, then,” Zayn agrees. He sweeps his thumb across the back of Niall’s hand. Niall’s phone, meanwhile, has started playing the Macarena. “Go stop the cars from exploding and then we can order in Nandos tonight, okay?”

“Yeah, alright,” Niall says, stealing the keys from Zayn’s pocket just as the lift door opens. “Love you too, man.” He kisses Zayn quickly and steps backwards into the lift, and Zayn waves goodbye as the doors close.

-

Liam is still stood there when Zayn lets himself back into the flat, his hands in the pockets of his joggers, looking at nothing in particular. There’s a faint line between his eyebrows. His back is almost deliberate in how straight it is.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Zayn asks.

“No,” Liam says, and hunches inward as far as he can without disturbing his too-upright posture.

Zayn nods. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

“Yeah,” Liam says. “Alright.”

“Want to watch Batman?”

Liam looks at him, and the line between his eyebrows smoothes out. “Yes,” he says definitively. 

“I’ll grab the crisps,” Zayn says, and heads to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

-

They’re one and a half films in and starting the second bag of crisps when Zayn says, “So me and Niall are together now.” Batman and Nightwing are having a late-night meeting in the Batcave, animated and just the right distance from reality that Zayn needed. The Nolan trilogy is a classic but sometimes Zayn just doesn’t want to deal with Christian Bale’s perpetual misery.

Liam looks up, startled. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says, flushing a bit.

“Zayn, that’s great!” Liam exclaims, so sincerely happy that Zayn’s not sure what to do with himself. “That’s amazing, that’s — when did this happen?”

“Um. Last night, sort of.” He looks away for a second, but his gaze keeps going back to Liam’s beaming face. “We kissed last week, but it… I took a while to, you know, process.”

“Right, right,” Liam agrees, nodding. Everything about him has softened into curves instead of tense angles. They’re so sentimental, for agents. Zayn thinks he’s glad the government hasn’t beat it out of them yet. “But you talked? You’re dating, like, properly and everything, right?”

Zayn knocks his knee against Liam’s. “It was only last night, it’s not as if we’ve had much time for a proper date.” Unless he counts the run to the shop this morning, at least, which Zayn doesn’t, even if they did kiss in the frozen foods aisle. “But yeah, we talked.”

Not a lot, but enough. Enough, at least, that they could fall asleep without any suspense hanging over their heads, no questions like _But does he really want this?_ or _But what are we now?_ to linger in the dark corners of Zayn’s anxieties.

“God,” Liam says, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “You never even said — I mean, I’d wondered, but.”

“If I’d said something it would’ve been real,” Zayn says, “and if it’d been real I would’ve had to worry about it.”

That’s an oversimplification by far, but there’s something true about it, at its base. Zayn’s not even sure, entirely, why he never told Liam outright that he had feelings for Niall. He thinks it would’ve felt odd, to have Liam know when Niall didn’t, a two-thirds imbalance of secrets that they’ve never had before. It would’ve weighed between them, something that Liam couldn’t change and Niall didn’t know. And maybe, anyway he never let himself believe that he had spilled over the divide between loving and in love, and everybody was a bit in love with Niall regardless, weren’t they?

“Oh, but — did you two want to go out tonight?” Liam asks suddenly, sitting upright. “I don’t want to get in your way, I mean, you don’t have to stay around to keep me company.”

Zayn snorts and throws his legs over Liam’s lap. “Don’t be an idiot. You only just got home, we want to see you.”

“You’ll tell me if I’m intruding though, right?”

Zayn rolls his eyes. Liam’s over-solicitude is endearing, except for all the times when it’s horrifically frustrating. “You’re not.”

“Yeah, but —”

“Shut it,” Zayn says. Red Hood wreaks cartoon destruction across the streets of Gotham. Zayn shoves his hand in the Walkers bag and accidentally crunches a palmful of cheese and onion crisps into shards. “You go away for weeks at a time on missions where you might not come back, and you’re my best mate, and you think we’re going to want you to fuck off because it’s date night? Are you serious, Liam?”

Liam shuts it. The movie ticks past. 

“I’m careful,” Liam says eventually. “You know I am, you’ve been out there with me.”

Zayn sighs. “I know.” They’ve had this talk in too many iterations to count — have been having it, one way or another, since Zayn talked his way into a promotion in the home office. Since Zayn got his life back, absent most of the running and shooting. And sometimes people still assume that he’s on offer just because he’s polite and his face looks nice in a mirror, and sometimes he still can’t disappear into a crowd because everyone around him is three shades paler, but at least it’s not part of his job anymore. He can tell people to budge off, if he wants, instead of fucking them or evading them.

He has Niall, and he gets to see his sisters and tell them things about his day that are only a little bit edited, and he has challenges that don’t involve staring down at a dead body and thinking, _I did that._

It’s always assassinations and seductions, when you’re pretty.

And Zayn knows, _knows_ , that Liam would never be good at doing paperwork every day, but he’s never going to be able to stop himself trying to convince Liam to move out of the field. 

“You’re my best mate,” he says again. “I miss you. We miss you.”

He watches the screen. Gotham is in danger, but Batman is on the job.

“So if I worked at the home office,” Liam begins, carefully light, “then you wouldn’t feel bad about telling me when I’m intruding?”

Zayn turns to look at him. Liam is smiling slightly, just a twist in the corner of his mouth, and Zayn can’t help smiling, ruefully, back.

-

Zayn just barely hears the text message ding of his phone over the DVD menu music, which loops tinnily in the background because neither of them has felt like getting up to change the disc just yet. His phone is buried in the couch cushions; he has to dig around behind Liam to find it, near where the gap in upholstery meets Liam’s lower back.

_haz has a problem so we’re gonna talk. be there in like 1 hr, save some chicken for me! xo loveyou_

Zayn thumbs at the screen of his phone. “Niall’s going to be late, he’s got a friend in town,” he tells Liam, and sends back, _We’ll try not to drink all your beer by then. XOXO_

Liam hums. He’s sprawled down, his feet propped on the coffee table and his back curved, his elbows dug into the seat. His physical trainer is going to yell at him for killing his spine.

_You better not! haha. also we fixed the power couplings but now we can’t get the cars visible again, whoops. No explosions though!_

“I’m glad for you,” Liam says suddenly, startling Zayn into looking up. Liam’s turned his head just enough to look at Zayn, his cheek resting against the top of the sofa. “You and Niall. You’re both always happy around each other.”

Zayn wraps his arms around his legs and rests his chin on his knees. “Niall’s pretty much always happy anyway.”

“Yeah, but like — you being happy makes Niall happier than other people being happy.” Liam frowns for a second. “Does that make sense?”

“I got it.” Zayn generally does get Liam. It’s why Management put them together so often, back when Zayn still worked in the field. “You really think so?”

“I do,” Liam says. “I’m not just saying that. I told you I’d always wondered, about you two.”

“You never asked,” Zayn says, and Liam shrugs as much as he can when he’s halfway to horizontal.

“I figured if you hadn’t told me, you probably had a reason.” His eyes crinkle, just faintly, like something in his face is thinking about smiling. “Or that I was imagining things.”

Zayn nudges Liam’s thigh with one foot. “Guess not.”

“Guess not. Strike one for, you know —” Liam takes a breath and says, “ _situational awareness_ ,” just like their old teacher from training, the one they called Mad Eye Moody during whispered conversations in the dorm. That was where they became best friends, late nights of studying and Harry Potter jokes and feeling out of place while their classmates, the ones who seemed to understand all the material naturally, used their new spy skills to sneak off to pubs.

Zayn wonders how Niall and Haz are doing, right now. He wonders if Niall will tell Haz that he and Zayn are together now, or whether Haz’s problem is so serious that Niall won’t want to distract from it. 

“Good old Mad Eye,” Zayn agrees belatedly. 

Liam turns his head again to stare at the ceiling, and his crinkled could’ve-been smile fades. Zayn unbends his knees a little so he can see more easily over them. 

The problem with situational awareness is that when you’ve been trained for it, you beat yourself up whenever you miss something. 

“Niall knew Lane,” he says. “Or Louis, I guess. He said Louis was a good person.”

Zayn hopes that Niall won’t be tasked to search out Louis, to set up an algorithm to track IDs and bank accounts and CCTV footage. It’s not precisely Q branch’s function, but Management has had them do stranger things in the past, like they’re IT people who happen to live in the basement and cause a surprising amount of explosions.

“I think they were friends,” he adds.

“Great,” Liam says flatly.

“It’s not your fault,” Zayn insists, bringing his knees down and nudging Liam’s side. “Niall knew Louis for a lot longer than two weeks, and he’s a pretty good judge of character, and _he_ didn’t know, alright? It’s not your fault.”

Liam sighs. “Thanks,” he says, the vowel sounds lengthened in the way he usually only does when he’s trying to hide his insincerity but the end consonants moving-on crisp, like he’s humoring Zayn so they can drop the subject. He stands up. “Put in the next one, yeah? I’ll go make us some more tea.”

-

Liam has to go to a department psychiatrist the next day. Zayn knows; he scheduled the appointment. It’s in the morning, because Liam likes getting those things out of the way, but not too early, because Liam still looks like shit and Zayn wants to make sure he gets enough sleep. 

It’s also early because Management said to put a rush on, which means both that they want to catch Louis more than they’ve let on and that Liam’s debriefings yesterday didn’t give them any good leads. If three hours of questioning in a white room led to nothing, the next tactic is a soft sofa and a friendly face. The compassionate interrogation, when torture or truth serums would send the wrong message.

It’s policy, anyway. All agents returning from the field must schedule an appointment with the psychiatrists before they are cleared to return to the field. It’s just that policy so often coincides with new information ending up in Management’s files: agents’ mental state, lies they may be caught in, possible triggers, signs of resentment or mutiny, crumbs of information they might not have realised they possessed. Doctor-patient confidentiality is a really curious thing at MI6, mostly because it doesn’t actually exist.

 _We must make sure you’re alright,_ the mandated sessions say, when of course they really mean, _We need to know what’s in your head._

Close enough, Zayn supposes.

He’s always wondered about how effective the system is, overall. It’s a bit unstoppable-force-immovable-object, isn’t it, pitting people trained to find truth against agents trained to lie. And agents do lie in sessions, all the time — about whether they’re ready to go into the field, about what they did on their last mission, about what they think of Management.

Zayn has lied to Management before. He’s not exactly proud of it, but he doesn’t regret it, either. He doesn’t think they’d appreciate knowing what he thought of that mess in Tajikistan.

Although now that he thinks of it, he’s not sure Liam has. Omitted a few non-essentials, maybe, but he’s too loyal to lie deliberately and too conscientious to leave out any important details. Management might want every scrap of information that Liam has about Louis, but Zayn doesn’t think they’re going to get anything more from the second interrogation than they did from the first.

Liam goes to see Dr. Murray anyway. Zayn could access the report, maybe, if Management don’t decide that Louis is too classified for Zayn’s clearance level, but there’s really no point to it. He just needs to wait for a quiet moment, that’s all. 

They’ve always been easy, that way. There haven’t been many problems they couldn’t solve over the course of several cups of tea and a quiet chat.

-

So of course Floor Two goes on lockdown right before Liam and Zayn are supposed to have lunch.

“I could’ve gone to uni,” Zayn reflects, looking glumly at the floor plan spread across his screen. The exits are marked in red, because they’re deadbolted and one more failed attempt to unlock them will trigger the emergency protocols. Zayn’s read the emergency protocols. He’d really prefer to keep his knowledge of them theoretical. “I wanted to teach English, you know.”

“Eh,” Niall says, lying underneath his infiltration robot and fiddling with a wire. “I’ve been to uni, it wasn’t that exciting.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Floor Two is mostly the medical wing, which is why it’s so easy to shut down, but the other floors should’ve been notified automatically if one of the doctors had flipped the quarantine switch. The fact that they weren’t, and that nobody can get the comms up, means that either the system is fried or someone is deliberately screwing with it from the inside. It could be a serious threat, but honestly, Zayn is willing to bet that it’s another bloody double-oh trying to break out of medical before he or she is completely healed up.

He doesn’t have time for this. He’s supposed to be managing the intel coming in from four different agents on active assignment, and he doesn’t entirely have time for them, either.

“I’d miss you,” Niall says. He reaches inside the tangle of metal robot guts with a length of duct tape; whatever he does, it makes the robot go from making choking, grinding noises to a solemn rumble.

“I’d take you with me,” Zayn offers, and Niall turns enough to send him a pleased smile. “I’d have the best tech of any teacher in England.”

“In the world, you mean,” Niall says, and gives a triumphant yell. Something clicks within the machine, and its spindly metal legs fold themselves up until the device as a whole is only a little smaller than Niall’s forearm. It’s also hovering mid-air. “That should do it. Which vents are still open?”

Zayn frowns at the blueprints. “A3 and D7, but contamination is on, so they’re filtered.”

“Easy enough,” Niall says, and pulls out a remote. The robot divides into five different pieces, each of them about the size of Zayn’s palm, and flies off in separate directions. Niall points the remote at the wall and five video feeds appear — mostly, at the moment, showing a moving perspective of the floor.

“I thought you liked uni,” Zayn says as they wait. Niall’s stories from uni have all mostly been cheerful recollections of places he drank at and people he drank with. He tells more stories about uni than about his first days at MI-6.

“I did,” Niall says. He stands up, coming over so he can sit on the edge of Zayn’s desk. “It just wasn’t that interesting. Classes were a bit boring.”

“Yeah, but you’re a genius,” Zayn reminds him, as if he might’ve forgot in the past few minutes when he wasn’t wrists-deep in experimental tech. “I’ve seen you disable a bomb and eat a bowl of pad thai at the same time.”

“But I was in for sound engineering, wasn’t I?” Niall asks. “Everything else, hacking and all that, it was really just for fun until CSIS nabbed me.”

“I still can’t believe you got caught by the Canadians,” Zayn says as lightly as possible, trying not to look too disconcerted. Niall’s mentioned it once or twice, being dragged from his life as a carefree genius into the world of national intelligence, but only when he’s been pissed off his head. “Was the CIA was just too cliché for you?”

“Obama was in Toronto,” Niall says, not looking embarrassed at all. There’s a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth, waiting to come out in full force. “And they have surprisingly thorough anti-aircraft technology.”

“Only you,” Zayn sighs fondly, and doesn’t ask how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service catching Niall’s fanboying resulted in an Irishman getting recruited by a British intelligence agency. A few other agents have brought it up before, typically with some very bad jokes. It never results in anything but Niall changing the subject. That’s alright. The three of them live on an island of trust in the middle of an ocean of secrets, but even so, everyone’s got to keep a few things to themselves.

Zayn never wonders how he got to where he is at any given moment. He can trace all the choices he’s made over the course of his life. MI6 scouted him, but he went to the interviews, filled out the forms, went to training instead of uni and practiced throwing knives instead of writing essays. He chose England. He chose to set aside drawing. He chose to stay. He chose to spend late nights in the dorms with that other quiet kid from their group, and to linger longer than he needed to in the Q basement after missions. He chose to make the shot, and then the other shot, and then the other shots, and he chose not to die. He chose to leave the field. He chooses, perpetually, what lies and truths he’s going to tell his family. 

Everyone makes thousands, millions, of choices a day, because that’s what living means, choosing to have the option to make future choices. Which is very sci-fi and all, this daily existence of tiny parallel universes perpetually being created, but in the roadmap of Zayn’s life, there are a few things that don’t feel like choices. Loving Niall — loving both his idiots — is one of them. It’s like loving his family: something that had to happen for the universe to make sense.

“Oh, here we go,” Niall says, as the image on the screen slows and resolves. The first of Niall’s mini-bots has reached Floor 2, this one apparently through the plumbing system, going by the view.

Zayn keeps his attention on the monitor and doesn’t say anything. There’s a lot that he wants to say, but not here, where there’s a listening device on the fern in the corner and a camera in the crown molding. That’s alright, though; Zayn’s always been good at waiting for the right time.

“Bet you dinner it’s a double-oh,” he says instead. The other four mini-bots settle into position, ready to slide around corners and prove him right so he and Niall can finish this up. Everybody deserves an afternoon free of emergency protocols.

Niall grins and says, “You’re on.”

-

They get Chinese later, when they’ve finally got off work. Or rather, when Niall and Zayn have finally got off work and Liam has finally gotten out of doing paperwork on Floor 1, which is apparently where he spent most of the day. He doesn’t look too thrilled about having done his nationalist bureaucratic duty.

Niall pays for dinner. Zayn only smirks a little.

It’s nice, anyway — good wontons, and small enough tables that Niall’s leg is snugged up next to Zayn’s — and then Zayn makes an offhand comment about Wolverhampton and Liam says, “I can ask tomorrow. I was going to go visit.”

“Oh yeah?” Zayn can’t decide whether to feel surprised or not. Liam likes to go see his family, but usually not directly after missions. He says he’s too jumpy, too prone to sleeping with a gun in his hand and shying away from hugs. “Management is alright with that?”

Liam shrugs, poking at his egg foo yung. “I’ve told them everything I know, three times over. If they have any reason to keep me here they haven’t said yet.” There’s something flat that’s hiding in his tone, but Zayn can’t quite pick out where.

Maybe he’s overthinking it. Liam had a hard time, and he wants to go spend time with his family. That’s understandable.

It’s not that Liam’s leaving. It’s just that he keeps being someplace that isn’t here.

“Send ‘em our love,” Niall offers around a bite of Peking duck. “Your family, I mean, not Management.”

Liam smiles. “Yeah, you can do that on your own. Slipping love notes into Cowell’s inbox, Niall?”

“Course, mate,” Niall says, laughing. “Those v-necks really do it for me, don’t they?”

“Maybe Zayn should invest in a few,” Liam says, flicking a sly look at the both of them. Zayn makes a face and lightly kicks at Liam’s foot under the table.

“You’re hilarious,” he says, instead of, _Your parents are going to see through you like a wet t-shirt._

-

Liam goes back to his flat to pack, and Zayn and Niall go back to Niall’s flat to… not pack. The opposite of pack, possibly, given that there are now clothes strewn across various flat surfaces. Zayn’s trousers are on the bedside table. Niall’s shirt, thanks to some invention Niall’s been testing at home, is on the ceiling.

Zayn loves Niall in bed. He loves Niall everywhere, admittedly, but Niall has more fun during sex than anyone Zayn’s ever slept with. Even the people he shagged when he wasn’t on a mission treated sex like a competition, or like something serious, like you couldn’t be sexy without keeping your dignity.

Zayn had technically realised in theory that you could be sexy and undignified, but he hadn’t really appreciated it until he met Niall. There’s something about the way Niall approaches life with a head-first confidence that’s always left him sort of awed, and that was before they ever started sleeping together.

Niall laughs off the awkward moments that inevitably happen during sex — the weird noises, Zayn bumping into the table, the bit where Niall’s grip on the sheets slipped and he fell on top of Zayn, the shirt on the ceiling — and Zayn just wants to kiss him and never stop. It’s nice that he’s allowed to do that now.

Niall’s still laughing now, with the sheets pooled around them and both of them squished to the side to avoid the wet spot. 

“What?” Zayn asks, prodding his side. Niall twitches away, his laughter trailing into more of a giggle. 

“His _face_ ,” Niall says, which Zayn is going to assume means that Niall is still thinking about the way 008 got thwarted this afternoon by a combination of Niall’s robots and Zayn’s skill at deciding which water lines to manipulate. It was rather funny, once Zayn got over the annoyance of having his time wasted by a thirty-year-old man refusing to stay in his damn hospital bed.

“And he still has to stay in medical,” Zayn agrees. “Bet the nurses tie-dye his cast, just to serve him right.”

The double-ohs, in Zayn’s opinion, don’t respect the nurses nearly as much as they should. You don’t fuck with the people in charge of your shots, especially when their idea of retribution can get much more elaborate than just pulling out the big needles.

“I hope so,” Niall says, starting to laugh again. He sprawls out, propping his head up on his hand and looking at Zayn. “Would serve him right, he’s got no sense of humor.”

“Most of them don’t,” Zayn says absently. He’s paying a little more attention to the feeling of Niall’s biceps underneath his palm. He trails his fingers down to Niall’s collarbones, where his skin, usually hidden under shirts, is so pale that it’s practically translucent.

Niall shrugs. “They’re not all bad.” He’s not got tense, but he’s not giggling anymore, either. Zayn looks up, curious, and Niall smiles ruefully and says, “Louis really liked, likes, pranks.”

Zayn doesn’t ask if Louis thought of it as a prank when he was tricking Liam into working with him. Saying so wouldn’t do anything to Louis, it would just hurt Niall, and that’s the opposite of what Zayn wants.

Zayn wonders how often Louis had come in between missions to chat with Niall over the framework of a new car, or if Niall had ever been on headset for Louis, both of them making bad jokes while Niall talked him through disabling a particularly tricky bomb. “I’m sorry about Louis. I know you said he was your friend.”

Niall scrubs a hand across his mouth. “I think part of me knew something was going to happen,” he says slowly. “Louis and the Agency were never a very good fit.”

“Apparently so.”

Niall lifts his free hand up, drawing Zayn’s hand off his chest and linking their fingers together. His voice is somber when he says, “He didn’t — the people we work for — they’re not very good people, you know.”

Zayn knows. Agents he respected have been left in prison camps with no extraction plan, because it wasn’t advantageous to let them out. He’s been ordered to kill people, simply because killing them was more efficient than dealing with them any other way. Any organisation that believes itself to be working for the greater good or in the national interest is going to be run by not very good people making morally dubious decisions.

But Zayn loves his country. He loves helping people. And sometimes, working in Headquarters, he can even soften some of those decisions so that the consequences don’t rebound as harshly as they might’ve.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But we do good things for them.”

Niall looks down at their clasped hands. The slant of his mouth is hard to read from this angle, and Zayn has the sudden, selfish thought, _Don’t be sad. Not you, too._

“We do,” Niall says finally. “We do good things.” He leans over, nipping at Zayn’s shoulder, and Zayn thinks they’re probably alright to leave it at that for a while.

-

“Heeey,” Zayn hears from behind them in the freezer aisle. It’s been two days since Liam left; they grabbed most of his perishables before anything went bad, which means they’re set on milk and such for a while, but Zayn had a sudden craving for ice cream. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He turns. Hazza’s there, holding a basket with three oranges, a banana, and a bag of frozen prawns.

“Haz?” Niall asks with furrowed eyebrows. “I thought you were going to see — your friend. The one you’re having troubles with.”

“Tony, you mean?” Hazza asks, dimpling up. Niall snorts. “My flight’s tomorrow. I’m glad I ran into you, though.”

“How come you need frozen prawns if you’re leaving tomorrow?” Niall demands.

Hazza looks into the basket like he’s forgotten what’s in there. Or maybe he’s just puzzled by it; Zayn certainly is. Then again, being friends with Niall has taught him not to question a man and his comestibles. “I’m making dinner for Ben and his wife.”

“A goodbye dinner?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Hazza says contemplatively. 

“Because you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Yep.”

“So you can go yell at your friend Tony for being an idiot.”

Hazza opens his mouth and then closes it again, but not before flicking Zayn the world’s briefest, most sideways glance. If not for Mad-Eye and his situational awareness, Zayn might never have noticed. “Yes. Well — yes.”

Lovely. Zayn had already begun to feel superfluous to this conversation; now he feels superfluous and awkward, even though by all rights it shouldn’t be possible for him to intrude on a conversation that sprung up around him.

“I’m going to go grab some crisps,” he says, trying to pretend that he’s just had a sudden and unexpected craving for fried potatoes with salt. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hazza says, in his particular deliberate way. It’s slow enough that it ought to come out sarcastic, but Hazza genuinely sounds apologetic. “That was rude, wasn’t it? Niall, you’re being rude.”

“I am not,” Niall says, but he reaches out to grab Zayn’s hand anyway, keeping Zayn tethered to him. “Sorry, babe.”

“No, it’s fine,” Zayn tries to insist, but it feels like the moment’s passed for that. He keeps trying anyway. “I just wanted crisps.”

“We haven’t decided on ice cream yet,” Niall says, squeezing Zayn’s hand. Behind them, someone opens and shuts a freezer door, sending a blast of cool air toward Zayn’s back. 

“Stay,” Hazza tells him. “I just wanted to say goodbye, anyway. I might not be around for a while, with Tony and all.”

“Do you not live in London?” Zayn asks politely.

Niall snorts before Hazza can answer. “He doesn’t live anywhere.”

“Hey,” Hazza protests. “I live places.”

“He owns about five different flats and then spends his entire life kipping on other peoples’ sofas,” Niall tells Zayn. “He’s lucky he’s got nice dimples or they’d all kick him out.”

“Heeey,” Hazza repeats, pouting. “I’ll have you know that I am an excellent houseguest.”

A shrill beep comes from Niall’s pocket and continues, modulating to a frequency that vibrates Zayn’s back teeth but isn’t too noticeable within the actual human range of hearing. Niall pulls out his mobile and makes a face.

“Crap,” he says, which Zayn saw coming. That’s Niall’s emergency ringtone, chosen because Niall has the amazing ability (Irish, he says, but Niall tries to ascribe most things to Ireland) to ignore loud and disruptive noises, but typically finds it harder to ignore the feeling of his molars grinding together. “The engines are on fire, I have to get back to work.”

Zayn looks doubtfully at the pints of ice cream they’ve been debating. “I can catch the bus back,” he offers, because Niall drove them and if it’s the emergency ring, then Niall can’t wait for Zayn to pay up or detour to get him home. Zayn may have to abandon the ice cream idea if he’s taking the bus, but that’s alright, he can get some biscuits instead.

“I can drive you,” Hazza offers. “If you need, I mean.”

“Really, the bus is fine,” Zayn says, hesitating. Hazza seems nice enough, but Zayn rarely gets into cars with strange men. It’s not a good habit to fall into. Also, if Hazza doesn’t already have Niall’s address, Zayn doesn’t want to give it.

“It’s no trouble,” Hazza promises.

Niall squeezes Zayn’s hand again. “Might as well,” he says, which sounds awfully like a seal of approval. “He drives like a turtle, though, just warning you. Haz, you remember where I live, right?”

“I think so,” Hazza says. “Go save your engines. See you when I see you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Niall says, pulling Hazza into a tight hug. “Good to see you, mate. Yell at your friend for me.” He pulls back, kisses Zayn quickly, and hurries out of the shop. Zayn has to hold his breath for a moment when Niall gets dangerously near the lady with a cart full of bread products, but he dodges her without a problem.

Which leaves Zayn stood in the frozen foods aisle, staring at someone who at one point drunkenly snogged Zayn’s boyfriend.

Hazza shifts his grip on the basket. His oranges roll around the bottom. “So,” he says. “Did you pick an ice cream?”

-

“How’s your friend?” Hazza asks.

They’re sat in the car, stuck at a light. They’ve been mostly silent since Niall ran out; Zayn thought it had been a mutual acknowledgement of the awkwardness of the situation, but maybe Hazza’s just been fiddling around trying to think of something to say.

He picked the wrong thing, in that case. “My friend?”

“The one who was with you in the pub before I came that night,” Hazza says. “You said he’d been feeling poorly.”

He looks like he actually _cares_. “He’s alright. Out of town.”

“It’s not because he’s upset, is it?” Hazza asks, frowning vaguely at the cars ahead of them. Zayn’s about to politely try and nip this line of questioning in the bud when Hazza adds, “My friend Tony went out of town because he’s upset.”

Oh. Zayn relaxes, more secure trapped in an enclosed space with someone who wants to talk about himself than someone who wants to pry into Zayn’s life. “Yeah?”

Hazza hums. “He hasn’t, like, said anything, but he usually only runs away when he feels awful about something and doesn’t want to deal with it. Or he’s really mean, which I guess is kind of like running away without going anywhere, but in this case he’s actually run away. To France. I think he wants to eat a lot of croissants and throw things at people who kiss by the Eiffel Tower.”

Well, god, at least Liam’s still in the country. “So you’re going to get him?”

“Yeah.” The light turns green and he presses down on the gas again. Niall was right; he’s an incredibly slow driver. “Niall wants me to yell at him.”

Zayn had figured that one out already. “You don’t want to?” He tries to sound nonjudgmental, which is fairly easy because, despite thinking that Niall is rather smart, Zayn doesn’t actually care.

Hazza is still watching out the front windshield. His hands are careful, ten and two, on the steering wheel. “Do you have friends who you’ve known for so long that you think you can’t get properly mad at them anymore?”

Zayn hesitates. “I suppose,” he says eventually, nonchalant in a way he practiced for years.

“It’s like that,” Hazza says slowly. “I know that he did something without thinking, because he always does things without thinking, and it hurt someone. But I also know that he’s probably making himself feel worse than anyone else could. He doesn’t even really like France.”

“Does Niall know your friend?”

“I’ve talked about him a lot,” Hazza says, shifting his hands on the steering wheel.

Zayn nods and looks out the side window. “Turn left here.”

The car creeps towards the left. “I just wish he’d talk to me about it, you know?” Hazza asks thoughtfully. “I can’t do anything to help if he won’t talk to me.”

He pauses. Zayn tries to think up an appropriate response, something kinder than _That sucks_ and more distant than _I know that feeling so completely_ , but before he can come up with anything, Hazza adds much more lightly, “So I hope your friend’s not like that.”

“He’ll be alright,” Zayn says.

Hazza eyes him, and Zayn suddenly has the — absurd, paranoid, unshakeable — feeling that he’s looking for something Zayn wouldn’t even know how to hide. “Yeah?” he murmurs. “That’s good.”

“So how did you meet Niall, anyway?” Zayn asks, because that seems like something that a normal person would ask his new boyfriend’s old friend. “He said something about uni?”

Hazza brightens. “We did this music program together one summer,” he begins, and Zayn sits back and listens to Hazza go on about song choices and coffee shops for the rest of the ride.

-

The thing is that Liam thinks that Zayn worries about him not being able to take care of himself in the field, but that’s not it. Part of it, maybe, but not all of it. Mostly, Zayn’s scared that Liam’s going to go away and change, and Zayn’s not going to know what to do when he comes back.

-

Liam drives back from Wolverhampton the next morning while Zayn is at work. Zayn doesn’t divert any traffic to make the trip faster, and feels distinctly virtuous for it.

Well, perhaps some traffic. He’s only human.

“Did you really?” Liam asks, making a face even though he absolutely had to be aware that Zayn would do this. “You know we’re not supposed to.”

“Yeah, with great power comes great responsibility,” Zayn says, taking a bite of the salad Liam insisted they make. It’s alright, but a bit lettuce-y. “It’s not like it hurt anything.”

“You don’t know that,” Liam says, as the sincere eyebrows meet the unhappy eyelids meet the frustrated twitch at the hinge of his jaw. “What if there was somebody who needed to go to hospital and you diverted them?”

“What if there were someone who needed to go to hospital just behind you and they got there on time because of me?” Zayn asks. “And who goes down the M40 to go to hospital, anyway?”

“You know what I mean,” Liam says, frowning down at his plate. “We can — the Agency can do so many things. I think we have to remember that everything has consequences. We shouldn’t be selfish.”

There’s something dark in his voice that doesn’t quite make up for the sting that Zayn feels at that. “It’s not like I stuck anyone in traffic for three hours,” he says, more sharply than he intends. It’s still not very sharp at all, but Liam will catch it. “I opened up a few things that wouldn’t normally be open, that’s all.” He just wanted to make life easier for Liam.

Liam jerks his gaze up, his eyes widening. “God, Zayn, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean _you_ were selfish. I wouldn’t. It was nice of you. I just, I didn’t need it.”

“So who did you mean, then?” Zayn asks. He’s not entirely willing to let Liam off the hook yet. Liam keeps doing this, getting stubborn and then backing down, circling a topic and then refusing to engage. He did it when he got back, he did it on the phone when he was in Wolverhampton, he did it earlier this evening when he kept asking if Zayn wanted to be with Niall despite the fact that they both know that Niall has a million friends he likes to spend time with and Zayn doesn’t like going out. 

It’s like Hazza was saying about his friend being mean; it’s all another form of running away. Hazza’s fairly clever, really. It’s harder not to like him than Zayn thought it would be.

Liam hesitates. “Do you think,” he says, after a few moments, “do you think our assignments are... bad?”

Zayn gives this a moment. He could point out that Liam just saved Sweden from Danish extremists, but Liam knows that already, and anyway, that was never his assignment in the first place. It was just what he did, because he was there and it needed to be done.

It’s the sort of question neither of them would dare ask if not for Niall; Management says that the bugs installed in every agent’s flat are safety precautions, in case of attack, but they’re still bugs. They still listen to you in your weak moments. Whoever’s on the other end of the line isn’t going to care about Liam’s emotional turbulence, they’re going to care about the fact that he’s indirectly questioning authority.

But Niall hates feeling like he’s got no private freedoms, so he sets up miniature white noise machines and constantly improves his bug-detectors everywhere he goes. Their flats are almost as impermeable as Niall’s car. So Liam can ask, and Zayn can think about the answer instead of immediately shooting him down.

“Niall and I were talking about that the other day,” Zayn says slowly, because the solemn twist to Niall’s face keeps lingering in his peripheral memory. “Sort of.”

Liam doesn’t say anything, doesn’t prompt him, whatever. Liam isn’t even looking at him, he’s just looking ahead really blankly.

“I suppose I think Management cares more about the big picture than anything else,” Zayn continues eventually. “And I think that it’s hard to have a set definition of good or bad in our jobs.”

“But you quit,” Liam says, rubbing his palms against his thighs, still looking ahead without any direction. “You were a good agent, but you quit doing fieldwork.”

Zayn forces his shoulders down. “You know why I quit,” he says, voice low; there are so few things Liam can say that will upset him, but somehow Liam’s just working magic tonight. “Liam, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Liam says. “It’s stupid. I’m fine”

“Jesus Christ,” Zayn says, slow and impatient, because otherwise he is going to fucking scream, “you are not fucking fine.”

Liam jerks his head, twisting to stare at Zayn. “What?”

“You’re _not fine_ ,” Zayn repeats. “If you don’t want to tell me what happened on your mission then fine, but don’t lie to me, alright?” It’s fucking insulting, is what it is, lying and acting like Zayn wouldn’t be able to spot it.

Liam stands up abruptly, grabbing his half-empty plate and heading for the kitchen. Zayn sighs and follows him, leaving his own dishes on the table.

“It’s only me, Liam,” he says, as Liam hunches over the sink and turns the tap on. “Just talk to me. I can’t help if you won’t tell me.”

Hazza’s probably in France already with Tony. Zayn hopes he’s having better luck on his side of the Channel.

“It’s stupid,” Liam insists, but he’s still visibly steeling himself. “Louis — Lane — the rogue agent, he said that Management was corrupt.”

“He’s a rogue agent, Li,” Zayn says, trying for gentle. It’s not Liam’s fault that Louis fucked with his head. Of course, if Zayn kills Louis, it will be Louis’s own damn fault. “You just said it. He’s not exactly trustworthy.”

Liam flinches. “Yeah, but — you stopped doing fieldwork, because you hated it. And Niall keeps destroying their bugs. And I thought, maybe —”

“I stopped doing fieldwork because it was making me not a person anymore,” Zayn tells him flatly. Liam knows this. They talked about it, over and over, before and after Zayn took the promotion. Liam _knows_ this. 

“Then what does that make me?” He’s still turned away, but Zayn bets that if he could see him his eyebrows would be drawn together, the corners of his eyes tense and worried. He turns the dish in his hands over and over again.

“Good,” Zayn tells him. “You’re good, alright? Look, Management does some bad things, but they’re mostly for good reasons. And even when they’re not, that’s why you’re out there. You get to make the decisions that make things right.”

There’s a pause. The water runs. Liam stops turning the plate and just looks at it. “But what if I don’t?” he asks quietly.

“You always do,” Zayn says. “But if you don’t, then you tell me about it, and we figure out how to fix it.”

Liam shoves the plate into place on Zayn’s drying rack. “You can’t fix this, Zayn.”

“Not if you don’t tell me, I can’t.”

“I can’t tell you!” If Liam were a different type of person, Zayn thinks, he’d be throwing something; instead he just grips the edge of the sink, his biceps straining with tension. 

“Why not?” Zayn asks reasonably. Liam doesn’t say anything, and Zayn frowns. “Liam, whatever it is, you know I won’t care.”

“I didn’t tell Management,” Liam says, so quietly that Zayn can barely hear him over the tap water.

Zayn stares at him. Liam’s shirt is stretched over his shoulders, his head hanging down. “So what?”

“So I can’t tell you.”

“What, like I’m going to tell them?” Zayn snorts, but Liam doesn’t say anything for too long. Something drops in Zayn’s stomach, something coiled and furious and petrified. He stalks over to the sink, tugging at Liam’s arms until he can spin Liam around and look him in the eyes. “Liam, that’s bullshit.”

Liam doesn’t look like he thinks Zayn is going to turn on him at any second, at least. He looks hunted, like something’s been chasing him since his mission and Zayn is slowing down his escape.

“I need you to have plausible deniability,” Liam begs in a whisper. “You spend so much more time with them than I do, I don’t want you to have to keep secrets from them.”

It’s a relief, honestly. Liam doesn’t think Zayn is going to betray him; he’s just being a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot again. It’s not exactly great news, but it’s still part of the world Zayn understands, not the world that flipped over on its head when Zayn thought that Liam didn’t trust him anymore.

“So you’re just not going to tell me?” Zayn asks. He grabs Liam’s shoulders, holding him there in case Liam tries to make a break for it. “I’ve kept secrets from them before, Liam. You think I tell them that Niall keeps frying their surveillance?”

“That’s different,” Liam insists. “I can’t — Zayn, if they find out, I need you not to know. I couldn’t stand it if they blamed you too.”

“Liam,” Zayn says. He keeps his voice down, too. Niall’s a genius at what he does, but — no sense taking chances. “I’d rather lie to them for the rest of my life than let you be miserable on your own.”

They lock eyes for a moment, and in his peripheral vision Zayn sees Liam’s chest fall as he exhales. He slumps forward, resting his head on Zayn’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t let you,” he says, but he’s already given in and both of them know it.

“You don’t have a choice,” Zayn says.

“It’s bad, Zayn. It’s really bad.”

Zayn slides one hand up so he can curl it around the back of Liam’s neck, rubbing his thumb against the short hairs there, the tense lines of Liam’s vertebrae. “You and Niall saved me, back when I was still doing fieldwork,” he murmurs into the side of Liam’s head. “You kept me sane. Just let me do the same, alright? I don’t care what it is. I don’t care.”

“I slept with him,” Liam says, his breath warming the hollow between Zayn’s shoulder and collarbone.

Zayn startles, he knows he does, but when Liam tries to back away he just slides his other arm around the curve of Liam’s lower back and draws him in closer. “Still don’t care,” he says. “And the double-ohs sleep with rogue agents all the time, anyway.”

He’s more surprised that Liam slept with anyone, particularly on a mission. Liam is almost compulsive about staying focused. Louis must be… quite something, Zayn thinks, and feels a bit queasy about it.

“But I’m not a double-oh,” Liam says.

Liam’s better than the double-ohs to Zayn’s mind, especially now that he knows Louis used to be one of them, but he’s not sure that’s what Liam means. That he’s not as suspicious as them, more emotionally invested in things, maybe; that he doesn’t get as much leeway from Management, equally likely and equally true.

“And?” Zayn asks.

Liam sighs, and they’re silent for a moment together. “None of them expected me to catch him,” he says finally. “Even Teasdale. She said I wasn’t suspicious enough of other agents because I expected them to be as loyal and motivated as I was. I think she was trying to reassure me that Management didn’t think I was working with him.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Zayn says, making a face, but he can’t exactly blame Management for considering the idea. Paranoia is rather their stock in trade. 

“Don’t. Don’t say that.” Liam shakes his head, just faintly, against Zayn’s shoulder. 

“Liam, I can tell. You were gutted by finding out. You wouldn’t be so difficult about it if you weren’t.”

Liam snorts. “Guess I’m pretty obvious, aren’t I?” Zayn starts to protest, and Liam shakes his head. “No, I know. I know. And they know. They thought — they just thought I was too surprised to catch him. He was too smart, and I was too, too stupid to bring my gun up in time.” And Liam, incredibly, starts to laugh, something hoarse and choking like it’s caught in his throat. “I spent two hours being interrogated by them about everything he said and they never — they never —”

He takes a breath and sounds horribly, wretchedly, bitterly amused when he says, “I guess I’m a better liar than I thought, aren’t I?”

He raises his head, looking at Zayn with an expression too tight and miserable to be properly called a smile. The corners of his mouth are up, that’s all. 

“Liam?” Zayn asks.

“I let him go,” Liam says. Zayn stares, and the corners of Liam’s mouth drop, painting lines of exhaustion as they go. “I told you it was bad.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t let go, either. 

Liam drops his gaze again. “I slept with him, and next morning the report comes in and there he was, and we both drew at the same time.” He says it fast, like he’s trying to get it all out at once, or maybe like he just can’t stop talking now that he’s started. “I could’ve brought him in. I had a gun on him. I could’ve. And I told him to go.”

Zayn rests his thumb just below Liam’s ear, where his pulse beats fast and jagged. “I still don’t care,” he says. “And Niall won’t care.”

Liam sags again, backwards this time, so that the sink is holding up most of his weight. There’s a slice of breathing room between them now; Zayn leaves it, despite his temptation to step forward again and physically stop Liam from closing in on himself. He thinks Liam might need the air.

“You should,” Liam says. “You should care.”

“Too bad, then.” Zayn raises his eyebrows. Liam doesn’t smile, but Zayn doesn’t really expect him to.

“I _told_ him,” Liam says. “I’m so stupid. I was stood there with a gun at his head and him telling me that Management is corrupt and he never lied to me and — I didn’t want to shoot him. I wanted to believe him.” He draws another shaky breath. “I let him go. That’s treason. It’s — it’s selfish treason.”

God forbid. Zayn thinks that Liam could probably commit unselfish treason and barely think twice about it — has seen Liam, in fact, ignore orders on at least three occasions so that he could help Zayn out of a pinch — but Liam apparently doesn’t have the imagination to believe that Zayn, in turn, might prioritise him over national security. That’s all right. Zayn’s had years to come to grips with his own personal system of ethics. He loves his country, of course, but there are people he loves far more. 

“I’ve poisoned at least three men because I was told to,” Zayn says. “That’s murder.”

Liam stops, derailed from his own wrongdoings. Good. His jaw moves, and again; Zayn can see Liam reconsider at least his three immediate responses. If he had to, he could probably guess at most of what Liam stopped himself from saying.

He leans into Liam’s space, reaches forward, and turns the tap off.

“Zayn,” Liam murmurs, the fabric of Zayn’s shirt now drifting against his face. “Why do we do this?”

Zayn puts his hand on Liam’s back again, gathering him up. “Because we do good things,” he says. 

Abruptly, he misses Niall. He always misses Niall when he’s not around, the same way he misses Liam, but usually he doesn’t feel such a pang over it. Niall has other friends that he likes to spend time with, and sometimes Zayn doesn’t want to see too many other people. But he’d said the same thing to Niall, _we do good things_ , and he thinks both his boys are a little lost right now. Zayn’s a little lost right now. It’s not fair for them all to be apart, when they’re better together.

“I wanted to believe him because I thought that then maybe everything else wouldn’t be a lie, either,” Liam says, bleak. His hands are still hanging loose and aimless at his sides. “But it was, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Zayn tells him. They both know that most lies are rooted in truth, somewhere, but that seems like a dangerous proposition to be bringing up now, with too many doubtful trick doors. That’s the sort of idea that someone like Liam, who thinks too much, could get lost in without empirical evidence.

Liam sighs, pressing his chin against Zayn’s shoulder. “What if he only slept with me so I’d trust him?”

Zayn is going to find Louis and kill him.

“I dunno, you’re well fit,” he says, because it makes Liam snort and lightly knock his head against Zayn’s ear.

“Zayn,” Liam says, and Zayn smoothes his hand up and down Liam’s back.

“I know. I know.”

“But I _don’t_ know,” Liam says. “He didn’t have to come with me. I keep thinking about it, and I don’t get it. He was the one who said we should break into the Embassy in the first place, and then he insisted on coming with me. He didn’t have to do that. Not unless he needed something, and I can’t figure out what.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Zayn promises him. “Niall will help.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t.” Liam finally lifts one arm up, fitting it around Zayn’s lower back. “I know Management need to catch him. But I don’t — really want to think about him. Again.”

His voice is raw, like the thought of forgetting Louis’s existence is too hard for him to bear, even now that he knows Louis was lying. Zayn can’t help but wonder what will happen if Louis ever comes back. He hopes they never have to deal with that.

“We can do that,” Zayn says. “He’s too classified for us, anyway.”

Liam huffs out something that, in another universe, might be considered a laugh, or maybe a sigh. “I can’t forgive myself. I don’t know how you can.”

“Because I love you,” Zayn says easily, because that’s one of the only things this evening that he hasn’t had to think about. It’s one of the things that neither of them has ever had to say.

They stand in silence for a moment, in the middle of the kitchen with Liam’s hands still wet from the dishes, until Liam says, “He knew who I was, right from the beginning. Just — I just hate the thought that he’s somewhere out there laughing at me.”

Zayn tightens his hold on Liam. “You’re home now,” he says, because it’s the only thing he really can.

Liam inhales, and exhales again. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I am.”


End file.
